Great race, great couple

Arnold Breitbart has a training routine and neighbors have spotted him in shorts running in the rain, snow, and heat. On March 25, the plastic surgeon from Great Neck and his wife Viviane will be making history, running in the first-ever Jerusalem Marathon. “I’ve been running for charity for years and this is an opportunity I could not pass up,” said Dr. Breitbart.
A veteran of numerous marathons, including Boston, Philadelphia, Washington and Tel Aviv, he has been running in recent years on behalf of Shalva, a 20-year-old Israeli organization that serves mentally and physically challenged children in Israel. Breitbart, 51, began running back in medical school and gradually increased his distances toward marathon levels. “New York has a great marathon because of its crowds, but I’ve enjoyed them all. Every time you run, you discover new challenges,” Breitbart said.
Up until now, Israel had marathons in Tel Aviv and Tiberias, with a half-marathon in Jerusalem. But Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat is a veteran marathon runner and brought the 26.2-mile race to the Jewish capital city. “Few cities in the world can combine breathtaking inspirational views like Jerusalem’s famous historical sites and amazing landscapes into their marathon course,” Barkat wrote on the website of the Jerusalem Marathon.
The route of the race will begin at the Knesset and will run past the post-modern Supreme Court building and the newly developed Mamilla neighborhood. The run will continue to the Old City through Jaffa Gate and out through Zion Gate. In contrast to the relative flatness of many marathons, the Jerusalem route will dip past the Sultan’s Pool and rise atop Ammunition Hill and the Armon Hanatziv Promenade before concluding at the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University.
“For most people, the challenge is the distance, not the hills,” Breitbart said.
In addition to his Shalva support, Breitbart will also be running on behalf of Blue Card, an organization that assists holocaust survivors. “I first heard about Blue Card when they put up a team in the New York City Marathon. I was instantly enamored with it because it’s so close to my heart,” Breitbart said. He is running in memory of his father Morris Breitbart who jumped off a Nazi deportation train bound for Treblinka and ultimately survived in a Polish farm attic.
“During the war he kept a diary. He died in 1976, and I learned about it much later,” said Breitbart of his father. After translating the diary from Polish, Breitbart published it in 2007, donating the original diary to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. “This diary is a treasure map. We visited the towns listed in the diary and we knew the name of the woman who rescued him,” Breitbart recalled.
Blue Card expects to raise $1,000 each from its dozen team members, with the proceeds to be split with Yad Vashem. Breitbart’s sister Shoshanna Rabkin of Bethesda, Maryland will also be running.
Viviane Breitbart said that her husband’s marathon diet includes rolls with pasta, but as he gets older he concedes that speed is no longer a great priority. “Looking at the altitude maps, I know that it won’t be my fastest marathon,” Breitbart said. “All these years I’ve been watching him run, now I will be training and I will better understand the race by running with him,” said Viviane Breitbart. This year also marks the 25th wedding anniversary for the couple.